Part One Evaluative Bibliography Assignment Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 3000 words

Part One Evaluative Bibliography - Assignment Example Ruth Gruber has written an insightful discussion about Virginia Woolf, both from the perspective of her writing and of her as a woman in the early twentieth century. Gruber interviews Woolf and provides commentary on the ways in which Woolf presents herself, in contrast to the way in which she has created her work, her demure, self-deprecating discussion of her own intellect revealed in such a manner as to deny the proclamations of her writing, not because she does not realize her own intellect, but because she seems to polite to actually discuss it. Gruber discusses Woolf as a woman of elegance, her voice within her novels having the same casual elevation that her demeanor seems to have. Woolf states to Gruber â€Å"And you want to interview me for your book. I don’t know how I can help you. I don’t understand politics. I never worked a day in my life† (2). This statement is the crux of the investigation done about the novel Orlando: A Biography, that this ingen ious writer who exhibits such a depth of understanding in regard to the political nature of gender roles and the way in which the social politics of culture affect the lives of those who are subject to those politics, that it is with a great passion that further information was explored. Gruber agrees and states that â€Å"I wondered how she considered that it was not work to write groundbreaking novels, brilliant essays, and book reviews, and why she would demean her knowledge of politics. Her books were full of politics; her friends in the Bloomsbury crowd were energetic political thinkers† (2). The exploration of gender is a core theme within the novel as Woolf writes an almost autobiographical account through the symbolic magical occurances that surround the life of a man who becomes a woman and refuses to age or grow old and die. Gruber states that â€Å"the early period of his masculinity would be analogous to that stage in Virginia Woolf and in almost every girl, when she longs to be a boy†(148). What Woolf is searching for, and seems to find, is a way to write about the experience of coming into one’s feminine self, of finding the woman within and understanding the responsibility that is involved in being a woman within her time period. Gruber goes on to say that â€Å"it is the female Orlando who can feel with intensity the impulse for physical and spiritual completion†(148). Woolf discovers herself and finds a way to best express that discovery through Orlando. It is within the framework of having met and come to interview Woolf that Gruber is able to find a more in depth understanding of the work that she wrote. Her discussions with Woolf lead her to find the Woolf within the character of Orlando, to unveil some of the mystery of the woman while revealing the androgynous hero/heroine of the novel. As Woolf is the true subject of the work, it is clear that the way in which she is revealed is draped in symbolism, the nature of her life thick with the influences of the culture in which she has lived, thus providing a framework in which to discuss the political aspects that bleed from the pores of the work. Cucullu, Lois. Expert Modernists, Matricide, and Modern Culture: Woolf, Forster, Joyce. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004. Print. Cucullu discusses the modern culture and the impact that writers have had upon the culture and the way in which they have been impacted by the effects of the changes and growth of modern culture. The nature of the work Orlando is discussed for the way in which androgyny comes to define a certain definition of love and desire. As Orlando has transformed from a man to a woman, his lust is no longer defined purely by the designation of gender. Thus, Cucullu states that â€Å"desire, and not gender or sex, is naturalized in the figure of Orlando†